Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 47
people coming back out and enjoying Nashua. And we need to encourage that and to be very blunt, | don’t
have the same optimism that other members of the Board do for the Performing Arts Center. So | think this
is amuch, much more cost-effective mechanism and incremental investment in downtown that is going to
pay dividends.
| understand that we have a TaxIncrement Financing District in that area, but | also understand there’sa
lot of work to be done in that area and there’s gong to be a lot of maintenance and upkeep to be done too.
So | don’t want to try to count the same money twice. If we have the opportunity to do it nowwith a surplus
that can be invested effectively now at this year’s rates, and start capitalizing on that next year, | think we
should do it.
President Wilshire
All set Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
Mm-hmm.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you. | wanted to first express my thank you to everybody really for digging in on this issue and
Alderman Lu in particular | thank you for bringing your questions forward. | don’t think you should be
apologizing for that at all. | don’t feel that the particular projects that were pulled out that you were looking
at are the right ones to be pulling, so | am not going to support this amendment. But! do appreciate that
we are digging in and really talking about this. So thanks.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Lu.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. | just wanted to respond to a couple of things. | don’t think this amendment will make any
difference to the unassigned fund balance because my understanding is it’s assigned to one thing now. |
could be wrong. And it’s being requested to be put into some other category. My perspective is this will
prevent the decision of funding the barriers from being a decision that’s made at the Committee level
because $72,000.00 do | have that right expenditure will only go to the Finance Committee. And by leaving
it there, | just feel that there’s nothing preventing us from spending it on barriers at some later point. It’s
just, you know, this doesn’t mean we are doing the barriers. And the amendment doesn’t mean we are not
doing the barriers.
| dispute the idea that if we don’t move it into the barriers nowit will be hard for us to do it later because the
money will still be there. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Attorney Bolton.
